Advances in Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies: Towards Automation, Connectivity, and Electric Propulsion

It is generally agreed that one of the transformative developments that is expected to profoundly disrupt human society is the advent of connected and autonomous vehicles. Ongoing advances in information and computer technology offer unprecedented opportunities for realizing or enhancing vehicle autonomy/automation, and connectivity not only between vehicles but also among vehicles, infrastructure, and other entities including devices. These developments continue to lay the building blocks for a new generation of transportation vehicles and associated infrastructure, and operations policies and regulations. Further, the need for emissions reduction and the rapid developments in battery technology (leading to shorter charge times and longer range) and alternative charging modes (such as inductive charging), are leading to electric propulsion of vehicles, a feature that is particularly indispensable or at least, useful for efficient operations of connected and autonomous vehicles.

This Research Topic is intended to crystallize current thinking and future directions regarding the science, engineering, and economic issues associated with the development of electrically-propelled connected and automated vehicles (E-CAV). The Research Topic provides an international forum for presenting and discussing innovative research work involving any of the three aspects of E-CAV. Each one of these disruptive technologies is enough to drastically alter the way we travel. However, the holistic effect of any combination of these technologies occurring together is expected to far exceed the sum of their individual effects. Therefore, the specific research application areas (vehicle types) addressed in the prospective manuscript may be: connected vehicles, autonomous/automated vehicles, and electric vehicles in a standalone manner, or better still, any combination thereof.

For each of these research application areas, submissions are encouraged that address at least one of the following research activity areas associated with E-CAV:
• Consumer demand assessments
• Policy and planning including impact assessments (energy, noise, land-use, safety, mobility, economic productivity and development, highway revenues, sustainability, operational resilience, etc.)
• Human factors and driving simulation
• Enabling technologies (including machine vision, machine learning, AI, etc.)
• Infrastructure design and management
• Operations and controls
• Modeling (including microsimulation)
• Implementation, including pilot tests.